India-China skirmish effect: Delay in Haima Austomobile's new energy vehicle debut in India

Sino-China tension, in addition to the on-going economic disruption due to the COVID-19 crisis, may cause a further delay in Chinese automaker Haima Automobile’s entry in India.

Earlier this year, Haima New Energy (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Haima Automobile Group) had entered into a technical collaboration with north India based Bird Group to launch an electric hatchback, likely to be named Bird Electric EV1, in the price range of INR 10 lakh upwards.

The vehicle was initially scheduled to be unveiled in the first week of February 2020. But because of the coronavirus outbreak in China, senior contingent from Haima were unable to travel for the show, delaying the formalisation of the venture by a few weeks.

This is the second attempt of Bird Group to set foot in the space of electric vehicles. Earlier, the company had tied-up with Swedish start-up Uniti One, which failed to take off on multiple reasons including the unviability of the parent company to mop up funds to keep the entity afloat and launch the vehicle commercially.

Nonetheless, despite the growing anti-China sentiment in India and the rising number of coronavirus cases, Bird Electric Director, Ankur Bhatia, still feels optimistic about the launch of the electric vehicle on the given timeline and make it commercially viable.

He said due to the travel restrictions, engineers from China and India are working online to make the product launch happen.

Mr Bhatia said, “The design was supposed to be finalised earlier, but due to the countrywide lockdown and stringent conditions on the movement of people the proposed plan could not work and people could not travel across countries. We would be clear about the next steps when the design is into the final situation and make some substantial progress for a viable product.”

He also said that by the time the design gets ready, there would be far more clarity on the India-China relationship. But going ahead, Chinese carmakers and companies can be quite bumpy, given the negative sentiment against China, added Bhatia.

India government has already declared a prohibition on about 60 the Chinese applications on Monday, June 29.

Bird Electric EV1 will have a range of 200 kilometers per charge, powered by a 30kw battery.